Sawyers Introductions

[Larry Edgerton]

Speaking of swingblades, when my wife finally gets around to winning the lottery like I told her I will have a Turbo Saw on my property. Who knew a sawmill could be sexy?

http://turbosawmill.com/gladiator/

Larry

[Cody Colston]

We could do a thread on quartersawing.

That would be cool. I've done some quarter sawing with my mill (Red Oak) but the method I use renders both QS and RS boards. I quarter the log and then saw each quarter separately. Takes a while.

I'd like to see some detail on the octagon method of quarter sawing and any other methods for band sawmills.

[Kent A Bathurst]

We could do a thread on quartersawing.

That'd be cool.

Understand, guys - I am not in your club - I am just an information fiend -- love to learn. Don't go off the rails just because I am curious.

Thanks

kent

[David Ragan]

Hi,

I'm amateur WW; fell and milled some maple several years ago, still have it stickered in bsmt.

No mill/kiln. Have a little wkd time for WW.

Love this forum.

Would like to nose around and learn about what is reasonable to expect from green logs and local mills as I begin a journey into chairmaking w green uncured wood.

My goal is to make a Windsor chair. I think I would really enjoy the handwork. Windsor seems grandiose right now, but that is the goal.

Thanks to all the professionals who share the knowledge with the rest of us.

[Dennis Ford]

I have been woodworking as a hobby for many years, sell an item once in a while but still consider myself more of a hobbyist than professional. I like tinkering and making tools so made myself a band type sawmill about a year and half ago. Starting to accumulate a nice stock of wood cut on my mill. Still learning about the drying phase although I had considerable experience with drying bowls and other turned items.

[Bill Rhodus]

Also interested in monitoring this category. I have a background in producing SYP in a modern, high speed mill (300,000+ bf per shift) and have transitioned to collecting the odd old growth log for shop material.

[John Fairbairn III]

I am not a sawyer - but my Dad and I did buy a sawmill last fall (almost like staying at a Holiday Inn Express). It is a Turner (made here in upstate NY) and was custom made for the previous owner with a 24' bed to cut 20' lumber. Bigger than our needs but welcome nonetheless. 13hp Honda powers it. We use it to cut up anything from hemlock for barn/building materials to cherry, maple, and some awesome spalted birch we found... We won't be hiring it out or hiring ourselves out, except to very few friends who have just a log or two. We wanted it to be fun - small investment and no need to make it repay itself. So far so good.
Future plans would include a kiln.
Loading is great - my Dad has a farm so we have two different tractors available to load and unload with a quick-tatch grapple. Perfect for heavy, long logs to gently place on the mill.
We still need to locate a local sharpening service for the blades...

PS - thanks Cody for getting this started.

thanks,
john a/k/a mapleman

[Danny Hamsley]

If you buy and use Woodmizer blades, you can send them to them for resharpening. It costs me a little over $100 for 10 blades, that is just over $10/blade, including shipping. They do a great job.

[Ed McEowen]

I bought a Norwood LM2000 in 2004 to salvage all the big trees that went down when a tornado came through our 40 acres in southwest Missouri near Jerico Springs. I used the lumber, mostly oak, to add an addition onto my house and replace some of the old board and batten siding. I have since become a fairly competent woodworker in order to make use of the lumber I keep cutting up. Though not really in business, I custom saw for anyone who brings their logs to me. In my stockpile, I have white and red oak, walnut, red cedar, mulberry, osage orange, cherry, Kentucky coffee tree, and honeylocust. I really need to sell some oak but haven't found anybody who wants to drive all the way out to the boonies to get it. It would be nice to find some "Creekers" nearby. I have a solar kiln and started a long thread on the Norwood sawmill forum, Norwood Connect, describing and picturing how I built it:

[John TenEyck]

I'm a retired R&D engineer and have been a hobbiest woodworker for about 30 years. About 10 years ago I started milling lumber with an Alaskan Mill after getting sticker shock buying a few pieces of hardwood. I milled over 3000 BF of local hardwoods with the Alaskan Mill until it wasn't near as much fun any more, then I designed and built a rolling mill, stealing ideas from many of the mills you see pictures of on the web. Here's a photo of it with my Husky 385XP in it.

20140716_134717.jpg

The base is just 4 x 4's and screws together, and the carriage rides on aluminum angle. It's light and portable which was the whole idea behind it. I can use it on my own semi rural property or put it in a pick up truck or trailer and mill wherever needed. When I'm not using it it's easily stored in an inconspicuous place. It has a 42" bar and about 34" between the frame.

I built a log dolly that allows me to bring home one log at a time behind my car. It started out with a capacity to handle a 24" dia. log, but I upsized it to 34" last year, which far exceeds the towing capacity of my car with a big log but on our generally flat roads I haven't had any problems so far.

Working alone is often a challenge when you don't have any real equipment for moving logs. The Alaskan Mill was easy in the sense that I could mill the log lying on the ground if needed. With the rolling mill I have to get the log up onto the bunks. Logs that roll well, and are less than maybe 24" dia. I can roll up two wood ramps that attach to the mill, but it takes two people to roll ones larger than that. For really big ones I learned about par buckling; so simple and effective once you see how it's done. I have a winch that hooks up to the hitch of my car that I use to do that.

Of course if you mill lumber you need a way to dry it and I'm not patient enough to wait on Mother Nature forever, so I built a dehumidification kiln soon after I started milling, following the principles outlined in a FWW article from about 15 years ago. I air dry the lumber first on typical bunks covered with corrugated roofing until it gets down to the EMC of my area of around 12 - 14% which takes around 4 months for 4/4 stock if I mill it in early Spring. About 275 BF of AD lumber can go in the kiln, which is in a corner of my basement workshop. It takes about 10 days to dry a load down to 6 - 8%. After drying is where I'm in trouble. My shop is getting so full of wood it's getting difficult to get any work done. I need another building to house the drier and dried wood but there are no obvious solutions with the size of my property. Oh well, better to have too much wood than not enough.

One really nice aspect of milling my own wood is I've gotten some woods that are hard to come by commercially, at least in my area. Black locust, honey locust, English walnut, and catalpa are a few that come to mind. Then there's the usual suspects of white and red oak, maple, and black walnut. I get all my logs for free, many through an arborist friend. Sometimes I help him take down a residential tree; in exchange I get the logs and sometimes the limb wood, too, which I cut and split for firewood. Other times he calls and asks if I want a log or two and he drops them off or I go pick them up. Sometimes I build something for him in exchange for the wood.

I don't really sell milled wood, but I have sold a few live edge slabs. I couldn't sell a one until I decided to dry them. When I advertised them as KD on Craigslist they all sold in a week or two. I've also traded work for wood. I milled, dried, and fabricated a 3" thick red oak fireplace mantle for a guy last Winter in exchange for the rest of the wood out of the two logs he brought me. I got over 300 BF of perfectly clear red oak out of that deal. OK, there was a bullet in it, but no hardware and hardly a knot.

John

[Ed McEowen]

John, I had an Alaska Mill (up to 24") once - even burned up a chainsaw with it. I advise you to never ever try out a bandsawmill - you'll be forever spoiled. But I bet your rolling mill improved things greatly. Still . . .

[John TenEyck]

Ed, I'm thinking about building a bandsaw mill one of these days. Yes, the Alaskan Mill was humble, but it worked. Here's what mine looked like with a 28" bar.

IMG_5346.JPG

I milled some mighty nice wood with it.

IMG_5347.JPG

I'm still running the same Husky 385XP on my rolling mill; well over 4000 BF with that saw now and it shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. It's a little hard to justify the time/money of building a bandsaw mill when what I have works pretty well and is so easily portable. If I do build a bandsaw mill I may very well build an electric one with something like a 5 HP motor. It would still be reasonably light, and nice and quite. I know my yield would likely go up from the smaller saw kerf, as well as faster cutting. Speed isn't that important to me, but more yield with a really nice log would be a good thing. Sometimes now I think I'm making sawdust and get lumber as the by product.

John

[Gary Price]

Are any of you in the central Maryland or Pennsylvania area? The reason I ask is I would like to know about a ban on cutting walnut trees. When I Google the information I didn't find anything, besides first hand info is better anyway.

[glenn bradley]

This is a great thread. If there were any member/sawyers in my area I would certainly prefer them over the lumber yard. Living in a desert area doesn't make sawyers a common thing. I have often daydreamed about a run to Oregon for a trailer load ;-)

[Tom Hogard]

Glenn, if you put your location in your profile it would help us understand where "my area" means. We are out there, we just need to be more proactive in helping clients find us.